site of the latest price related intrigue
Some conspiracy theory type cashier, a thirtysomething dude that’s been with the company for maybe three weeks, sticks a post-it note to the monitor up in Palmyra’s office which reads, Friends: be careful what you’re doing on here! “They” are watching!! He has drawn some eyeballs up above the message, a set looking to the left, and another set looking to the right, while at the bottom, much as you can infer such from a simple drawing, there’s a big old sarcastic smiley face.
This message cracks Edgar up, the first time he sees it and beyond. While the sentiment is a bit much, there’s no denying things are getting a little more corporate around here. The impetus for his post-it note, surely, is a days old incident whereby Teri Barnette, who was drafted to figure out the latest equipment related malady, had connected in via VNC to take a remote look at Palmyra’s office computer…and sort of flipped out to discover that someone was scrolling around Amazon on that screen, shopping for black lights.
The only reason Edgar knows this is that Teri was coincidentally making a rare appearance at Southside that morning, before getting sidetracked by the Palmyra crisis. She was sitting in his office, over at the Orchestra computer, and therefore he could overhear the whole thing. Teri called the store to discover that neither Corey nor Brady were on hand at the moment, therefore reduced to asking Shelly to accost whomever was conducting personal business on the office computer, and tell that person to knock it off.
Edgar chokes back a guffaw, thinking only the most obvious, immediate thought that this probably was Shelly, though it doesn’t seem to have occurred to Teri. But beyond this, there’s a lot to unpack with such a seemingly simple exchange. On one hand, primarily speaking, Teri is attempting to use that computer for urgent business reasons. That much is clear, and most pressing. But that doesn’t address every angle at play here — for example, she could just lock down that p.c., or X out of the browser, or type a message on the notepad, to boot somebody off of there, if that were all.
There’s also a phenomenon he’s noticed elsewhere before, although it seems more prominent here than any of his previous employment stops: this notion that IT is supposed to act as some sort of enforcement agency. It’s one of those scenarios which everyone shrugs off without a thought, although if you do stop to think about it, this doesn’t really make any sense. Sometimes HR or management is telling IT to enact certain measures, obviously, but it seems that just as often, the tech crew takes to playing police on their own.
A couple of months ago, everyone at roughly the same time happened to observe that all their CD drives had been disabled, in the various offices at all three stores. As they are wont to do, people were complaining to Edgar about it — both for therapeutic reasons and because half of them still think of him as a tech guy.
Sometimes IT is forced to take various actions for safety reasons, though it’s difficult to think of any compelling scenarios regarding these CD drives. Even the potential phenomenon of people playing their unsavory musical jams doesn’t really wash, as there have been readily available options for that, beyond the compact disc, since at least the early 2000s. Which leads to the final piece of this puzzle, that employees make their bemused wisecracks to Teri every now and then, about these CD drives, to which she’ll say something along the lines of huh, really? As they continue to remain disabled. And many are then left remarking, as with this black light shopping incident, that it seems like she is taking some weird personal stance against this stuff.
But surely whoever is doing this has legitimate motives. This operation could stand to get a little more professional, absolutely, though Edgar believes this is someone else’s fight. While looking more professional certainly has its place, his job is more involved with fixing various broken or nonexistent processes that are actually affecting the bottom line. Although it has dawn on him that merely doing one’s job better, and improving the business somewhat as a result, by its very nature means that you are also making it a more corporate place.
Which in turn means they are encountering plenty of opposition on this front alone. It’s not just that some are still fighting the simple, sleepwalker-friendly task of sending him new items on the spreadsheet, but they’re running into this same basic mindset continually elsewhere. Deli employees complaining about being locked out of the scales, even though the one person reluctantly given access, Christie, he is forced to continually remind cannot be adding things like mayonnaise without breaking down its ingredients as well. Here as in many other situations one encounters the expected, “really?” as a means of playing dumb, or absent minded, when in fact it’s just that someone doesn’t feel like doing something, or even possibly still doesn’t believe him, as though genuinely forgetful enough not to recall that Palmyra’s deli was just shut down for this issue. Others complain that it’s none of his business where they order things, or at what cost, even though this is literally his job. But maybe none of these issues face the resistance that the price updates do, especially when it comes to the major vendors. Here there are continual overheard grumblings which often employ the vague, all purpose to the point of meaningless word “bullshit” to describe why they think it’s a stupid idea.
Palmyra alone also continues to face tremendous problems getting these major price updates hung. Opponents in turn use this as further fuel, that they shouldn’t be cranking these changes out so regularly — even though, as some are beginning to suspect, one of these individuals must be actively, intentionally sabotaging this process, i.e. is a major reason why they continue to experience such problems.
Unlike the weekly updates that he’s sending every Monday, for things he’s noticing on invoices, or else smaller vendors with newly released price lists, the major vendors they have begun to randomize, though adhering to a monthly frequency on these. Whereas before, in his early days, a procedure he inherited from Teri, they were deploying all departments of, say, the Universal Foods catalog, on the first of the month, the state pricing auditor had clearly latched onto this scheme and was constantly showing up at Palmyra right in the middle of this.
Thus they have begun breaking out each department, and notifying all responsible parties a few days in advance. But the whole point behind the randomizing bit was so the auditor wouldn’t know, and yet somehow he continues to show up during the largest of these updates, the shelf-stable grocery one.
This prompts Corey to proposing some fairly outlandish theories, and corresponding solutions tying in with these. His initial complaint, an obvious one, is that Edgar must not be printing out all the tags. Edgar’s able to refute this readily enough, however, by figuring out the first and last tag printed that day, then finding these on the shelves, with the date that one would expect. These crank out on a roll, similar to adding machine tape, with stickers that peel off, so to have the first and the last is to have them all. Just to erase any suggestion along these lines whatsoever, though, with Teri’s help, they are able to figure out how to make their tag printer store a record of its print batches on the office computer’s desktop, in a clearly marked folder.
Corey then moves from here to insisting there must be something wrong with the equipment at this store alone, and that it is skipping tags in the middle somehow. Even though these print histories show the number of tags printed, which match what is expected. Still, to humor him, at his demand, Edgar is now printing out two copies of every single batch, one of which Corey locks up in his office.
Because it isn’t just that they are getting busted by the auditor, it’s that Duane occasionally notices that the posted price here differs from Southside or Liberty. A quick investigation is launched, during which it unfailingly turns out — because there’s almost nothing else that ever could be the answer — the price is the same at all stores, but Palmyra never hung the new price tag.
Throughout this Edgar keeps thinking, not to bust anyone out, but the most likely answer to this riddle is that your people are simply not doing that great of a job hanging these tags. This much should be obvious. Southside does roughly the same business as this store and almost never has any problems. And he says as much to Corey, though Palmyra’s store manager continues to fight this suggestion, adamant that it must be something else.
And to some extent, it’s becoming apparent that he’s right — but not in the way that he or anyone else expected. Edgar continues printing out two of every roll, though they’ve never documented a single case that the equipment here was “jumping” over tags in the batch. Even so, it’s gotten so that at Corey’s behest, they’re cutting out all entry level flunkies in the hanging of these updates, employing only Trudy, the store managers, Edgar, and whomever else they can rustle up from the merchandiser squad.
One day Corey, Edgar, and Arnie are attacking the same grocery aisle, when they hit upon an amusing but brilliant strategy. Maybe there’s a sports analogy at hand here, but whatever the particulars, they’ve noticed that moving up and down expends much more time and energy than going directly across. Which leads to a height-based hack to avoid this scenario: Corey, the towering giant, will hang the higher tags, while Edgar, who is the nimblest among them and doesn’t mind crouching or kneeling, will hit the lowest, leaving Arnie to work the middle. And they move right down the aisle in this fashion, slightly staggered to avoid running into each other.
The fines keep escalating, though, and the implied, ominous sense one gets from this government employee is it’s best not to protest too much, or they’ll only make it worse. To grouse that this isn’t fair, of course the prices don’t match, we only changed them this morning and are still feverishly hanging the tags, dude. He doesn’t want to hear it.
This latest incident finds them hit with an $1100 charge, which, Corey says, Duane is forcing him to pay back out of his own salary. And as they’ve limited who is hanging these major updates at Palmyra, and as the auditor continues to show up with baffling regularity on the morning of these updates, even though they are “randomizing” their days, it seems inarguable that someone in the trusted inner circle is tipping off the authorities.
It’s not lost on Edgar that there are plenty remaining from the old hippie regime who still hold out hope of going back to the former laconic ways around here. They don’t like these “corporate” procedures, consider all of this a bunch of unnecessary bullshit. And if they have to throw him under the bus to accomplish this — along with whomever else — then this is totally fine with them, is possibly even necessary. And for quite some time now, Edgar’s really only suspected one person in this role as double agent: Harry Redcrow.
Not that he’s mentioned Harry’s name to anybody, though, not even Tonya Flaherty. For that matter he hasn’t even suggested this theory to anyone in any fashion. And yet a conversation with Corey reveals that they are both thinking the same thing, although Edgar’s probably been wrong to focus upon Harry. The problem with developing a theory about certain events is that you often become too attached to this scenario, and develop blinders as a result, are not really seeing the flaws or the grand overview.
He and Corey are in a grocery aisle, hanging the latest wave of tags. Though missing Arnie this time around, they are sticking to the height related method, and making solid progress. Actually, Shelly’s at the far end of this aisle, too, on the same side, though they haven’t bothered including her in their scheme. Corey’s telling him about the $1100 fine, and Edgar’s muttering that it’s weird how this keeps happening at this store only.
“Yeah, well, I think somebody is tipping them off,” Corey says, which does bring a smile to Edgar’s face, that he’s latched onto this idea as well. But Corey cranes his neck, peering down at the far end of the aisle, in a manner indicating that this directly ties in with what he’s saying, “I think somebody doesn’t like all of these price updates.”
Shelly. This doesn’t prove anything, of course, but it makes a ton of sense. She’s perpetually disgruntled and she’s certainly smart enough to pull it off. Now that Corey’s implied this, too, Edgar begins to realize that Harry is not really a reasonable perpetrator. He has a ton of industry contacts, sure, which is one of the factors leading Edgar to target him, but there’s no compelling reason why the guy would be obsessed with selling out this store alone. A person working at this location, however…well, this concept is food for thought, to be sure, a point to keep under one’s cap while continuing to observe a certain suspect.
